For Janice Myles and her seven siblings, their lives are forever bound up in the life — and death — of their father’s church. The Rev. Leonard L.
Hester and his wife, Parthena, founded New Light Baptist Church in 1954, and right from the outset, it was a family endeavor. Myles and her two sisters grew up singing in the choir, conducted by their eldest brother and accompanied by their younger brother on drums. In 1977, when Hester moved New Light from Oakland to a former Swedish church in South Berkeley, Myles remembers pitching in to redecorate.
The Hesters hung chandeliers and trimmed the sanctuary in gold leaf paint. It all cost her father a fortune, but it was worth it, she said. “It was his sanctuary to God.
” Today, though, the gold leaf paint and chandeliers are long gone, and the building has a radically different decor. Its salmon exterior now slate gray, the property has a wrought-iron spiral staircase, a domed movie screen where the altar once was, and a rooftop jacuzzi with panoramic views of Berkeley and the Bay. After decades of dwindling membership and donations, the Hesters lost New Light to foreclosure in 2014.
Two years later, architect Josiah Maddock bought the historic Black church and spent six years converting it into a six-bedroom, multi-story residence. Maddock currently rents it out to five tenants — a collective of artists and tech workers, none of whom are Black, who say they’re creating a “congregation” of their own. Since its const.
